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Big data spending set to surge

Revenues for big data and business analytics (BDA) in Western Europe will reach $34,1-billion in 2017, an increase of 10,4% over 2016.
According to a new update to the Worldwide Semiannual Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC), commercial purchases of BDA-related hardware, software, and services are expected to maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9,2% through 2020 when revenues will be more than $43-billion.
“Digital disruption is forcing many organizations to reevaluate their information needs, as the ability to react with greater speed and efficiency becomes critical for competitive businesses,” says Helena Schwenk, research manager: big data and analytics at IDC.
“European organizstions currently active in big data programmes are now focusing on scaling up these efforts and propagating use as they seek to learn and internalise best practices. The shift toward cloud deployments, greater levels of automation, and lower-cost storage and data processing platforms are helping to reduce the barriers to driving value and impact from big data at scale.”
Banking, discrete manufacturing, and process manufacturing are the three largest industries to invest in big data and analytics solutions over the forecast period, and by 2020 will account for more than a third of total IT spending on BDA solutions.
Overall, the financial sector and manufacturing vie with each other for the largest share of spending, with finance just edging out manufacturing, accounting for 21,5% of spending on BDA solutions compared with manufacturing’s 21,2%. However, the industries that will show the highest growth over the forecast period are professional services, telecommunications, utilities, and retail.
Western Europe lags the worldwide market in overall growth, with a CAGR of 9,2% for the region, while worldwide spending will grow at a CAGR of 11,9%. The highest growth is in Latin America, while the largest regional market is the US with more than half of the world’s IT investment in big data and analytics solutions.
“The investments in the finance sector — banking, insurance, and securities and investment services — apply across a wide range of use cases within the industry,” says Mike Glennon, associate vice-president: customer insights and analysis at IDC. “Examples include optimizing and enhancing the customer journey for these institutions, together with fraud detection and risk management, and these use cases drive investment in the industry.
“However, the strong manufacturing base in Western Europe will also invest in big data and analytics solutions for more effective logistics management and enhanced analysis of operations related data, both of which contribute significantly to improved cost management, and hence profitability.”
He adds that adoption of big data solutions lags that of other 3rd Platform technologies such as social media, public cloud, and mobility, so the opportunity for accelerated investment is great across all industries.
BDA technology investments will be led by IT and business services, which together will account for half of all big data and business analytics revenue in 2017 and throughout the forecast. Software investments will grow to more than $17-billion in 2020, led by purchases of end-user query, reporting, and analysis tools and data warehouse management tools.
Cognitive software platforms and non-relational analytic data stores will experience strong growth (CAGRs of 39,8% and 38,6% respectively) as companies expand their big data and analytic activities. BDA-related purchases of servers and storage will grow at a CAGR of 12,4%, reaching $4,4-billion in 2020.
Very large businesses (those with more than 1 000 employees) will be responsible for more than 60% of all BDA spending throughout the forecast and IDC expects this group of companies to pass the $25-billion level by 2020. IT spending on BDA solutions by businesses with fewer than 10 employees is expected to be below 1% of the total, even though these businesses account for over 90% of all businesses in Western Europe. These businesses need expertise and time to evaluate and adopt big data solutions and will rely heavily on solution providers to guide them through implementation of this technology.